Posts Tagged 'Spin'

Following on from the previous post, asking where the anti-EU vote the media keeps talking about is, ComRes has published the findings of a poll of UKIP voters at the European Elections asking them to prioritise the issues that determined why they voted for the party.

The details, published on Political Betting, show that leaving the EU trailing a long way behind controlling immigration in the priorities of those who voted UKIP.

So even though this a ComRes poll, we are once again left to ask where this huge anti-EU vote – which the legacy parties and media are determined to use as an explanation for the UKIP vote and justification for the fantasy EU reform agenda – is.

In years gone by UKIP members would have ranked leaving the EU as their number one issue by a very long way. But that is clearly no longer the case. Immigration has become the big issue, despite UKIP having no understanding of the global dimensions of immigration rules and no policy to address them, and it is that subject which has seen support for the party increase. The anti-EU cause is being diluted and eroded.

This is leading to the other parties and media applying an outdated and inaccurate interpretation that they wish the metrics would underpin, rather than an interpretation of what the metrics actually show.

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Like a dog returning to its vomit, I cannot help but return occasionally to the comment section of the Barclay Brother Beano. The reason being I have challenged myself to uncover at least one vaguely sensible or remotely valuable contribution amidst the sea of drivel that passes for articles and comments.

It is there we find today a piece by media’s favourite nominal conservative and Cameroon cheerleader, Fraser Nelson, who, presumably having read Bravo Two Zero, now seems to fancy himself as a defence expert. His article is one of those that boasts a welcome, if surprising, nod to reality, but then falls into ruin due to morale sapping ignorance that completely devalues his contribution.

Where Nelson gets it right is in calling William Hague for his ludicrous reassurance that he would stop any “strategic shrinkage” – as Nelson explains, to make sure that Britain’s standing on the world stage would not be diminished because there were cuts going on at home.

Hague’s failure there is only eclipsed by the other failures Nelson reminds readers about. Firstly, that UK forces in Iraq occupied Basra after the invasion only to be forced out by Iranian-backed militias, after which an inquiry was commissioned to ask why we fought, rather than why we lost. Not many media types recognise this reality, instead preferring to retail the laughable MoD line that our forces completed their mission successfully and withdrew.

Secondly, the current debacle that sees UK forces – after the disgraceful loss of over 400 lives, and wasted expenditure of billions of pounds – about to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban, effectively ensuring that all that blood and treasure has been sacrificed for nothing. Again, that’s not the MoD line but it accurately reflects reality. Due praise to Nelson for that.

However, it is when Nelson turns his attention to the Ukraine crisis – in order to underline his argument that our defence capability has been eroded too far – that he falls in with the official line and misrepresents what brought this crisis about.

Nelson explains that because of the defeats outlined above, and our tepid and badly judged misadventure into Libyan affairs, to the outside world Britain looks like it is shrinking fairly quickly – along with other indebted, war-weary Western powers. Our commitment looks shaky, our judgment even worse. That’s fair enough. But what follows is where he goes native…

And this, of course, is what has fuelled the Ukraine crisis. Vladimir Putin saw how things were changing, and decided to give the Caucasus a prod; then to see what would happen if he annexed Crimea. The answer, as he suspected, was not very much. Now, his unbadged militants are at work in the east of Ukraine with dozens dead. Still no reaction. This sent out a clear message to Moscow and beyond: the West has grown tired of policing the world. And now, as a century ago, things are up for grabs.

That is utter rubbish.

What fuelled the Ukraine crisis was the European Union’s expansionist ambitions. A complete disregard for the promises made by NATO to the Russians that the west would not encroach one more inch eastwards, saw the Association Agreement tabled to Kiev, with the plan being the eventual assimilation into the EU. Despite this there is not a single mention of the European Union/EU anywhere in his piece.

For reasons historical, strategic and those relating to a nation’s pride, Ukraine was a line in the sand. Home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea, the EU’s efforts were provocative and smacked of arrogance.

The United States also has skin in the game. It encouraged the EU’s move as it would greatly appreciate the Russians being contained in that part of the world so Washington can retask its resources to its efforts to front up to China from the Pacific.

Putin’s actions were a response to the EU’s efforts to begin the process of taking over Ukraine, not the cause of what is happening in Ukraine today. In no way was what we are seeing today driven by a Kremlin assessment of our degraded military capability.

It would probably be fair to say that a calculation of NATO’s effectiveness and willingness to adopt a military posture has dictated the nature of the Russian response. The assessment of how far NATO would go, to support that part of Ukraine’s population that rejected a brokered deal for elections, where the EU Association Agreement could form part of the proposition put before the electorate, has been purely reactive.

The British public is being fed yet another spoonful of lies from the government, as it was during Iraq and Afghanistan. While Fraser Nelson was happy to tell it the way it was over those two campaigns, he is clearly loathe to admit the truth about the EU origins of the Ukraine crisis. One wonders if this is because the EU is a construct he approves of and has repeatedly argued the UK should remain a part of?

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The claim that Norway has to put up with EU regulation without representation, and has no influence over what it must implement to be part of the single market (so called ‘fax democracy’) is a lie. There is no other way to put it.

The fact is Norway has more influence over EU regulation than every EU member state. Norway also has a veto over EU law so it does not have to follow the EU line. Norway also pays substantially less to the EU for single market access than it would pay to the EU for being a member state. Facts such as these are not just drawn from documentary evidence, they have also been established by speaking to ministerial level politicians in Norway who are best placed to understand exactly how access to the single market, without being an EU member state, impacts Norway.

These facts have been repeatedly shared indirectly and directly to Mats Persson of Open Europe – a ‘think tank’ that claims to be Eurosceptic, but which doggedly works to keep the UK firmly stuck in the EU – in order that he may correct his inaccurate claims. Despite this, Persson continues to repeat the lie time and again, using his platforms on the Open Europe site and the Telegraph’s Blogs section. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that Mats Persson is determined to deceive people in order to further his agenda of keeping the UK in the EU.

But knowingly repeating a falsifiable lie in the media in such a manner, to deliberately deceive readers, surely cannot be acceptable. Therefore, my friend The Boiling Frog has submitted a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, outlining the truths that Mats Persson deliberately seeks to conceal from people as part of his deceitful campaign. The text of the complaint is shown below – and all readers are invited to share it and its contents widely in the media and on other blogs. Please also feel free to reproduce the information below to submit your own complaint about Persson’s falsehoods, so that the PCC takes notice.

———————

Dear Sirs

I’m writing to you wishing to draw your attention to an article on the Daily Telegraph website by Mats Persson Director of the think tank Open Europe. He writes about the important issue of the UK’s membership of the European Union – more specifically in this case the possible method of leaving. The website URL in question is below:

My reason for contacting the Press Complaints Commission is that I have deep concerns that much of the article is incorrect and factually wrong. In particular I wish to highlight this paragraph regarding the debate about the UK’s role in the EU:

“If only it was that simple. There’s no good off-the-peg model that the UK can simply adopt should it leave the EU. The Norwegian (“regulation without representation)…”

Persson’s dismissal of the Norway option (“regulation without representation”) has been repeated before despite being corrected personally to Persson himself and in the comments (url below)

Mats Persson’s argument relies heavily on the false doctrine that Norway has “no influence” in making EU law. However this is simply factually untrue, Norway has more influence than the UK regarding Single Market rules as illustrated below:

A) Many of Single Market laws are made at an international level for example the WTO – Norway gets to represent itself while the UK has only 8% influence with the EU which represents us on our behalf.

B) Norway is also on over 200 EEA (Single Market) committees which influence EU law from the outset –Anne Tvinnereim, former State Secretary for the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development in Norway for example said this: “we do get to influence the position”.

C) Norway can then contest that laws don’t apply to their EEA agreement – currently they have over 1,200 in dispute.

D) Ultimately Norway can veto any EU legislation, as they did with the 3rd EU Postal Directive while the UK had no choice but to implement it by the 2011 Postal Services Act.

Another inaccurate assertion by Mats Persson in the same article is:

“Under Article 50 [of the Lisbon Treaty] and in continuity deals, France, the European Parliament and others could consistently block market access for the UK’s exporters of IT, insurance, banking and other services.”

The Lisbon Treaty and Article 50 is covered by international law, notably by Article 54 of the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties, for the EU – an international organisation – to block market access would be in fundamental breach of international law. The EU would be obliged to adhere by its international Treaty agreements.

The UK’s membership of the EU is clearly a very important topic of debate and regardless of various views of our membership rigorous but accurate debate in our media is essential. The Press Complaints Commission confirms on its website it considers that accuracy of the press is of utmost importance:

1 Accuracy

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published. In cases involving the Commission, prominence should be agreed with the PCC in advance.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

iv) A publication must report fairly and accurately the outcome of an action for defamation to which it has been a party, unless an agreed settlement states otherwise, or an agreed statement is published.

The issue of the UK’s membership of the EU has clearly taken a more prominent role in UK politics, signified by David Cameron’s promise of a referendum in 2017 (if he were to win the 2015 election) and the current debates between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg. Thus it’s imperative that the public are accurately informed. In this spirit we note the Press Complaint Commission’s conclusion with an untrue story about EU rules on eggs in 2010:

With this in mind I wish to formally complain that Mats Persson’s article breaches the code of conduct of accuracy – it is misleading and is an attempt to severely distract readers of a very popular newspaper from forming a proper and considered opinion.

Yours faithfully

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Met Office forecasts are seemingly becoming ever more sensationalist. Observed weather conditions too often show that predicted extreme weather either fails to materialise, or turns out to be nowhere near as extreme as forecast.

Yesterday was another case in point. The media was saturated with worry-inducing forecasts of high levels of atmospheric pollution at concentrations never before seen in this country. The Met Office were at pains to spread the warnings around. And they are at it again today.

Yet in the event, the ‘high or very high levels of air pollution across southern England and the Midlands’ came nowhere close to the predictions. It turns out the pollution levels three weeks ago were worse than yesterday’s ‘7’, but that hardly got any coverage and hardly anyone except those with severe respiratory conditions actually noticed any difference.

There’s method in the Met Office’s hype madness, from all these ‘weather warnings’ and triangles on TV maps that now appear in seemingly every other forecast for conditions that are almost always perfectly normal for the time of year, to the Met Office’s new overblown pollution predictions. They know that people will only remember the overblown warnings and the media’s fealty in reporting them with due prominence. It is all intended to embed a sense that our weather is becoming ever more extreme, to fit their narrative on human induced climate change – and justify ever more millions for ‘research’ and ever more lavish computer systems.

The Met Office’s typically quiet concession after the fact that things actually didn’t get as bad (£) – or even close to as bad – as they believed, for some reason or other, never gets the same prominence of course. They are able to say they corrected the record if challenged, but they quietly make the correction in the same manner in which a newspaper will bury an inconvenient correction on page 31, in a single column inch of tightly spaced lettering near the foot of the page.

Then everything is fine again. Until the next time. Meanwhile the bonuses continue to flow from our pockets into theirs as reward for alarmism rather than accuracy, and the propaganda continues to gush out of their site in Exeter, and the sites of their alarmist University allies in Reading, Leeds and East Anglia. Also, to ensure these fearmongers are never challenged on their hype, the BBC commissions ever more ludicrous reports to criticise giving airtime to people who seek to counter the ‘consensus’ and point out flaws in the science, thereby justifying the naked bias in editorial decison making and coverage of the subject.

It seems the greatest warming that is happening is that of our hearts as we joyfully fork over ever larger sums to fund this nonsense without complaint or revolt.

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(this post may be updated with links and additional information later…)

Lesson 1

Standard Life has broken cover to tell the market that if Scotland chooses to leave the United Kingdom without an agreement covering currency, interest rates, taxation and regulation, it would look at relocating itself to England.

This is little different from the concerns business in the rest of the UK would have if a political party decided to repeal the European Communities Act and simply declare independence from the EU.

Such a political party would be deluding itself to believe that all the complex issues and problems this would cause relating to trade, tariffs, regulations and agreements that have been made with other countries on the UK’s behalf, would come out in the wash and that World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would force the EU to maintain trade with the UK as if we were still part of the customs union. Exiting in an orderly manner with a negotiated agreement is the only responsible course of action. Anything else and the actions of Standard Life in Scotland would be replicated many times over in the rest of the UK and on a much bigger scale.

Lesson 2

While speaking to the Today programme on Radio 4 about WPP’s latest results, chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell was asked about what the business community – which has been going along with the deludophile nonsense about EU reform – would do if reform could not be achieved.

After explaining that the business community feels there are a lot of positives being in the EU – in other words the single market, as the EU is political and the single market is economic – he said the business community would want to stay ‘in’ if no reform was achieved.

Therefore, those who are most vocal in calling for impossible EU reform will stick with the status quo if the changes they want are not forthcoming. The fact reform will be impossible was made clear by a German guest speaking separately on the same programme this morning about the visit of Angela Merkel. He pointed out that Cameron’s reform agenda was going to go nowhere, not least because no one knows what his supposed demands are.

It was pointed out by this guest (name to follow) that the Treaties that would need to be changed were the product of years of negotation and compromise, and so the outcome would be the same compromise, with little or no change. The Lisbon Treaty would be strictly off limits and none of its elements would therefore be negotiated let alone reformed.

Added together we can see that a grand performance is being played out for the media and public, to give the impression that there will be changes. But it is just that, a performance, an act, and nothing of substance will be altered.

Cameron famously said about the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by Gordon Brown that he ‘would not let matters rest there’. But he did. Cameron is now on the stage once again, prancing around and delivering a monologue to the audience, gazing imploringly into the stalls and peddling more fallacies, in the shape of a rengotiation our EU overlords have told us won’t happen, and in the shape of a referendum that cannot possibly be delivered in 2017 even if the Conservatives form the next government.

And now we can see that behind him are those people who have given their backing to this drive towards an illusory outcome, but who are now saying that they would stick with things as they are if no reform came about. EUsceptics need to bear these important lessons in mind.

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In the previous post we again questioned what could be achieved through a public inquiry into the extent of flooding. We contend that such an inquiry would be a whitewash waiting to happen. It just needs an on-message Chairman appointed to move the roller.

We know this because we don’t have to look back far to see the results of the last flooding inquiry, that concering the floods in the summer of 2007, by Sir Michael Pitt. In the nearly 500 pages his report covers, EU directives are mentioned a mere 13 times, and not even in respect of causation.

The Water Framework Directive is not mentioned at all and the Habitats Directive gets one mention, in a ‘box out’ that explains dredging – in almost entirely negative terms!

The EU is mentioned a number of times, but almost exclusively in terms of funding and claiming money from the Solidarity Fund – which would have the effect of reducing the amount of rebate the UK would have for its EU contributions in the financial year.

Given that concerns about the impact of EU laws on flood protection were already at the fore in 2007, why on earth does anyone believe another inquiry or review into flooding now would produce a different outcome to Pitt?

What is Farage’s game? He can’t influence the terms of reference, witnesses or the Chairman of an inquiry, so what does he think will be achieved? The EU elephant will be in the room but everyone standing around it will continue to avert their eyes and pretend it isn’t there. The eventual outcome will just be held up as vindication of the existing approach and couched in purely domestic terms.

The story does not contain even a single mention of the terms ‘European Union’, ‘EU’ or ‘Brussels’. The EU-supporting Daily Mail has however done its work. The millions of people who read the site will see the headline and accept it at face value, while only a proportion of them will click through for more detail and find no reference whatsoever to what the headline’s claims.

It seems that despite the silence of the main parties and UKIP about the EU’s involvement in degrading the UK’s flood prevention approach, the grassroots effort to bring the issue to the fore and expose the UK’s inability to control its own floods policy and environmental concerns being given priority over humans, homes and businesses, has got some in Brussels and the UK media rattled.

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David Cameron today once again successfully failed to bang on about Europe, as he said Britain has ‘to do better as a country’ to protect itself from future floods, the Telegraph tells us.

No doubt those people of the Somerset Levels who had time to listen in on the radio while trying to cope with flooding, evacuation and the turning upside down of their lives, will have been incredulous when Cameron said that officials are working on a plan to protect the Somerset Levels, although, as he put it, it is still not clear what the best solution for the area would be.

Here’s a radical thought, as a starting point, how about a return to the flood prevention activity that was wound down over the years by the Environment Agency to fit a political agenda created through the EU? If those who managed to listen in to the pontificating buffoon were not already grinding their teeth in anger, then this may well have done the trick:

Dredging has a part to play.

At the end of the 1990s when the Environment Agency was established, there became rather an anti-dredging culture and some of the expert bodies said it shouldn’t be part of the picture. It has to be part of the picture.

Why won’t anyone acknowledge me?

Unsurprisingly, there was not a single word about why it was suddenly decided that dedging shouldn’t be part of the picture, or the concerted effort by the EU to inflate the price of dredging through waste management laws and restrictions on moving river deposits once on land. Far less any mention by the Telegraph’s Peter Dominiczak, who, like UKIP, passed up the opportunity to add value by providing context and sharing established facts.

EU law has been changing the British landscape – literally – aided by environmentalist activists like Baroness Young, who Labour parachuted into positions of power to wreak havoc on the approach to flood prevention, because they shared the EU view of wanting to see reclaimed land, such as the levels, refilled with water to become habitat museums – this despite the fact that flooding the long since established farmland in this way kills the animals living there and results in a putrid, stinking swamp that cannot sustain fowl in any case.

Around the areas that have been flooded there will be some very lonely animals. But there will be none so lonely, or so deliberately ignored, as the great big EU elephant in the room that the useless UK media and politicans from the four main parties are doing their best to pretend they cannot see and does not exist when it comes to the flooding issue, how it has been allowed to happen and acknowledging who was responsible.

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The Daily Mail reports that, ‘millions of pounds in child benefit paid to families living outside the UK will be axed under David Cameron’s plan to claw back powers from Brussels.

Cameron has insisted that it was wrong that the British taxpayer is giving cash to 40,000 children who live elsewhere in the European Union, and went on to reveal that stopping migrant workers in the UK from claiming child benefit for their offspring back home would be a ‘key demand’ of his plans to renegotiate a fresh deal with the EU before staging an in-out referendum by 2017.

This of course underlines the vacuous nature of the supposed renegotiation. The whole thing is a complete sham. If the detail above is a key demand, we can see that the essential issue of ‘Who should run Britain?‘ will remain a no-go area. There is to be no change, the UK will remain firmly under the control of Brussels and parliament will remain a hollow, rubber stamping shell of its former self.

The separation of the political from the economic is the only way to ensure people see the real issue that has to be addressed – yet which the political class is determined to keep off the table.

There are various economic settlements that can be negotiated to mutual EU-British benefit to ensure concerns about access to the single market are mitigated in the event of a Brexit, but political control of the UK is a binary condition… either the British have self determination, or we are ruled by a foreign entity. That is the only issue and we must not allow it to be kept off limits by focus being diverted to trivial sideshows such as Cameron’s pledge today.

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Alan Bown’s money is generating headlines for UKIP that are better than the actual polling numbers themselves suggest.

The headline figures of these UKIP commissioned polls are being reported somewhat selectively. I don’t know why this is happening, but with such a small sample in each constituency (only around 500) and by only publicising the figures that exclude undecided voters and those who refused to say who they would vote for, the poll is largely meaningless.

For example, in Great Grimsby the realistic polling figures (page 6 of the table, figures rounded) are:

With nearly a third of respondants not knowing or not saying who they will vote for, this poll really tells us nothing. Bown is wasting his money, or at best paying well over the odds for some favourable short term headlines in the Tory hating press.

Looking at the figures objectively, the Labour lead is no surprise. This was a seat the Tories failed to win, even against the most unpopular Labour government in history, falling 700 votes short of Austin Mitchell in 2010. Looking at that result gives the impression of this seat being a marginal. But in reality, the Tories have shot their bolt and now they are part of an unpopular government they were always going to fall away to more normal levels of support.

To put things into context, below is the result from Great Grimsby in 2005, which shows the more normal order of things in the constituency.

Getting back to this Survation poll for Bown/UKIP and the comparison with 2010, the Guardian’s report is little short of ludicrous:

Meanwhile Ukip is significantly outperforming its projected figure from most national polls, up 15 points on 23%, far above the 15% projected from national polling.

The UKIP vote was 6% in 2010, but when you look at the full numbers in the Survation poll, including the all important undecideds and refusals, UKIP is up 10 points to 16% – which is 50% less than the Guardian is trying to spin and completely in line with the 15% vote share projection from national polling.

It’s not a bad increase, but it is nothing like what the media is trying to spin. This is another example of the lamestream media trying to concoct a story out of nothing.

Further, when one considers UKIP’s recent election results have seen increases in their vote directly correlating with the previous BNP vote that has lost its home, the 16% today is only 5% higher than the combined UKIP/BNP 2010 share in Great Grimsby of just under 11%, shown below:

Of course, in this poll some of the refusals might be UKIP supporters and some of the undecideds could break for UKIP in 2015, so a 23% vote share is still possible, if somewhat unlikely. But as with the polling numbers released last week for Thanet South, the media coverage seems to be following an agenda that gives UKIP false hope that they are performing better than they actually are. The devil is in the numbers that are being deliberately ignored.

I have not yet looked at the Dudley polling, but I’ll wager the pattern is continued there and the headline numbers are overstating the real support the parties are getting.

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When one reads headlines like the one shown here in the Daily Express, it feels like we have been transported into some parallel universe where reality has been inverted, and where stupidity and ignorance are what pass for intelligence.

Such is the level of utter detachment and delusion at the paper that some would be forgiven for thinking of as UKIP’s house journal. Well, with friends like the Express, UKIP certainly doesn’t need enemies.

As Richard points out on EU Referendum, in the Express and in the Daily Mail (which also claims for itself the credit for this imagined victory) for all the rhetoric, for all the analysis and for all the posturing, it boils down to the message millions of voters will receive: the government is doing something about migrants. The reality is that the government is doing nothing of substance, because it can’t.

What started as an article in the Financial Times has blossomed into the front pages of the two “middle England” tabloids and dominated the media agenda for over twenty-four hours. Rarely can such a modest investment have yielded such huge dividends.

The odd thing is that David Cameron’s piece did not even enjoy the status of an official announcement. Go to the Government website or No 10 Dowing Street and you will see nothing on migrant policy. And neither, apart from an exchange in PMQs, will you see anything announced in the Commons. Parliament, it seems, is too unimportant to be kept in the loop.

Thus, we have “government by Financial Times“, thereby ensuring that most people will not have read the statement or have had access to the semi-firewalled article. They will be relying for their “take” on what the popular papers (and the BBC) tell them. And the message conveyed is as much as David Cameron could have hoped for.

How on earth do newspapers get away with being considered authoritative and worthy of respect – the prestige factor – and even have High Court Judges fawning over their supposed ‘powerful reputation for accuracy‘ when they present stories like this that are so completely and hopelessly wrong?

To echo Richard, nothing that Cameron has done in respect of immigration control has had the slightest impact on these figures, and nothing he is going to do will impact on levels in the short- or medium-term. But that doesn’t matter. His meaningless waffle and empty rhetoric is sufficient for now, and it will be enough to put UKIP back in its box for a week or so. And this from the paper the Kippers consider to be their ally.

It’s politics, so perception trumps fact and facts aren’t even checked by the media corps. They just take at face value what the spin doctors chuck at them and don’t even think to look at the laws or even the previous unkept promises that never materialised. Then they file their copy, go to the pub and congratulate themselves on being such important and well connected people with so much prestige.

These idiot journalists, with their fat salaries and with prestige weighed by the tonne, have been well and truly conned – and in turn, through their ignorance and laziness, are spinning a tissue of lies to their readers. Useless wankers.

Perhaps those people demanding an early in-out referendum on EU membership would do well to stop and think how the media would negatively impact the out campaign when it can swallow government rubbish and get simple issues like this so catastrophically wrong.

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From the ever confused and deceitful pages of the EU-supporting Daily Mail – the paper that quietly declared way down in a long editorial, ‘Let the Mail lay all its cards on the table. This paper has no desire for Britain to pull out of Europe’ – we have yet another bit of supposed red meat tossed to EUsceptics to keep them at bay.

Irrespective of the reality about trivialities such as how these things work, who has the ability to convene them, when they can be called and how items are accepted onto the agenda, the Mail reports the latest from Europlastic HQ to quiet the maddening crowd and give the illusion that something of substance is being done.

Next week, a group of Tories will unveil their own blueprint for reform of Britain’s relationship with Europe.

Andrea Leadsom, Chris Heaton-Harris and Tim Loughton, from the Fresh Start Project, have identified at least five major changes to EU treaties they say should be at the heart of Britain’s renegotiation.

They include reforms to protect our financial services industry and an end to limits on work hours. Tory Eurosceptics also want reforms to energy policy, the common agricultural policy, defence and immigration.

Add in to this renegotiation mix other ‘demands’ including limits on EU migrants who claim benefits in Britain, and the right to stop making payments such as child benefit, to the dependent children of migrant workers – and the Mail’s self delusion that this ‘move’ comes only after a poll for the Mail identified deep public anxiety about the ending of transitionary immigration restrictions on new EU members Romania and Bulgaria in January – and we have all the ingredients for a special episode of Fantasy Island.

Let’s not forget of course the shallow commitment to an in-out referendum sometime in 2017 that keeps being floated to keep the unruly peasants in their hovels, something that is almost certainly not going to happen because the EU will be in the midst of a new treaty negotiation to shore up the Eurozone and provide the EU with direct taxation powers to help with its revenue vs spending shortfall.

I’m only surprised we haven’t seen Osborne Tattoo running for his bell shouting ‘De Plane!! De Plane!!’

[Many will be pleased to know blogging will be light to non existant this weekend – lots on at Mind Towers]

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And so it continues. The BBC has been given an advance copy of Ed Davey’s forthcoming speech to Energy UK:

Gas and electricity customers are “not just cash cows” to be “squeezed” to create bigger profits for shareholders, Energy Secretary Ed Davey will say.

In a speech later, the Liberal Democrat minister will call on the industry to “open up your books” to show how it is trying to minimise tariffs.

But it’s OK with Thick Ed that gas and electricity customers are ‘squeezed’ with visible and hidden government taxes and levies – being used as cash cows to enrich corporations and land owners with rental fees and grossly inflated feed-in tariffs for the most inefficient and unreliable energy generation available… wind turbines.

Perhaps it is time Davey and the Common Purpose-loving, human-hating drones at DECC opened up their books to show us how much is really taken by government, through energy bills and general taxation, as they pursue the Agenda 21 inspired strategy to force down energy consumption as part of the campaign to achieve a warped version of ‘sustainability’.

Yet this man will have the nerve to utter these words:

You deliver an essential public service, so your industry must serve the public – and the public must have trust in what you do.

And what of government? When will government serve the public? When will we ever have trust in what government does? Ed Davey and his fellow troughers should get their own bloody house in order before engaging in this ‘nothing to do with us guv’ nonsense and telling others what to do.

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Last February, the BBC and others were proclaiming the ban on discarding at sea fish that had been caught but either could not be landed legally, or were of inferior quality to that which sells at the desired price, as a great victory.

Roger Harrabin, the ‘environmental lobby propagandist’ who draws a substantial income from the BBC, in addition to substantial cash from various sideline work for the very eco groups whose every report and argument he then reports about without challenge or question, went so far as to say that it was “something of a victory for citizen power, following organised lobbying of MEPs by ordinary people, as well as by high-profile celebrity chefs and environmentalists”.

The reality, as Richard argued some months ago, would be very different. While everyone was singing the hymns of EU praise back then, North was about the only voice taking time to explain that:

Even then, some discarding at seas is going to be allowed. And, while the reforms are to prevent discarding at sea – what this means is that non-quota fish will be landed, and disposed of on-shore. This is marginally better than dumping at sea, but only marginally so. It will have very little effect on the overall health of the fishery.

In effect, therefore, the much-vaunted “reforms” are a big bag of nothing – a cynical PR exercise of very little consequence.

Fast forward back to today and what do we find? The Guardian with a ‘scoop’ story that reports on the findings of a study by the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture. Guess what one of the lead authors, Professor Alastair Grant, has to say?

The discards ban is not the great victory that the public seem to think.

Well, colour me shocked! Richard expands on this in a valuable post today over at EU Referendum. But rather than focus on that – you can read it for yourselves – I’m minded to ask a question.

Is there a single damned thing that comes out of Roger Harrabin’s mouth, or from his keyboard, that we can rely upon to be accurate?

People in this country are saddled with paying the salary of this activist lackey through the BBC licence fee, for nothing but biased reportage, naked propaganda and inaccurate scare stories hammed up to reinforce the spiteful agenda of his coterie of envirochums. But the BBC love it because it is their agenda too. Forget impartial reporting. Forget balance. Forget question and challenge of assertions made. The BBC is a publicly funded propagandist, abused by its employees to push their worldview on a public they treat with scorn and contempt.

Let’s see if Harrabin corrects his previous claims of victory and present the reality, or if he will leave falsehood to stand as the BBC’s published record of these matters.

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Today’s big political story, the Adam Afriyie inspired vote to bring forward an EU Referendum in this parliament, will be the big story for the wrong reasons. As the Daily Mail reports:

David Cameron is facing a Tory rebellion of up to 20 MPs today as he tries to head off calls to hold a referendum on Europe next year.

Maverick Tory Adam Afriyie last night indicated he would defy the Prime Minister and force a Commons vote as he tries to make the PM hold a referendum before the 2015 general election.

The media will paint this as Eurosceptics trying to push David Cameron into an early referendum so people can have their say on who runs Britain. The reality is rather less noble. They are not doing this for us. This posturing is the political equivalent of the Italian Job with Afriyie in the Michael Caine role, leading a small gang on an enterprise in their own interest. This is the self preservation society in action, putting their electoral prospects before all else. As the story reminds us:

In a letter to MPs, Mr Afriyie said: ‘This is Conservative MPs’ last chance to try to secure a referendum. If we don’t take this opportunity we risk sleepwalking to election defeat by driving voters to Ukip.’

We may as well look away. This is a local issue for local political climbers, there’s nothing for us here. Whereas in the film we are left guessing as to whether Caine’s gang managed to save the gold they had plundered, the outcome of this little enterprise is nailed on. It is going nowhere. But that won’t stop the media hamming it up in an effort to embarrass Cameron. With most governance being managed from abroad, this is what passes for major political news in Britain these days.

Still, it will serve to deflect attention from something else. So keep your eyes peeled for something unappetising being sneaked out while the glorious media corps piles into Westminster in an effort to make a big drama with some colouring pencils, old pieces of newspaper and paste.

Following the CBI’s ludicrous assertions about UK membership of the EU being worth £3000 for each household in the country, Cameron has gone to the organisation’s annual conference to praise as ‘very positive’ their report which called for the UK to stay in the EU. The Telegraph is reporting his comments.

Anyone can bandy figures around in the way the CBI is doing. But when one scratches below the surface of what the figures include, it is easy to see this was a desperate attempt to service the vested interests of the CBI’s corporate membership. Perhaps EU membership is valuable to corporates for the way it enables them to choose where they pay tax so they maximise profits. But these profits do not filter down to UK households. They leave the UK economy and are sent overseas to the overseas bases of uber-investors.

Anyone Europhile can do a Cridland and go on radio and TV and say that alternatives to membership, such as Switzerland and Norway, aren’t as beneficial as membership, so long as they don’t have to back up their assertion with evidence. Switzerland is not a good model because although they are independent they have to negotiate every deal they have with the EU. And the problem with that is? Norway is not a good model according to Cridland because, well, the only rationale he can come up with is the ‘influence’ lie that has already been comprehensively debunked, but is ignored by our biased media.

And as for that tired old canard that we export half our output to the EU, that too is a deliberate distortion. That 50% figure includes goods destined for non-EU countries that only transit through other member states. The lie has long since been exposed, but it continues to be retailed by the likes of the CBI and the BBC, as part of their political motives for keeping the UK in the EU.

But back to Cameron. He has spent all his time as Conservative Party leader telling the UK what he wants. That included saying he doesn’t want a referendum on EU membership because he feels membership of the EU is the right thing. But having been painted into a corner he has had no option but to promise a referendum – so long as the Conservatives are elected into office in 2015. Only now he talks of seeking ‘consent’ for the UK to stay shackled to Little Europe – a consent he previously said wasn’t required. How times change.

The bullshit that emanates from Cameron’s mouth is the most putrid kind. He told the CBI:

Be in no doubt that in the end you cannot stay in these organisations, give up quite a bit of your national sovereignty, unless you take the British people with you.

The British people were told about a Common market, about an economic area, so much has changed about this organisation and so little consent has been granted.

It is time to make those arguments, seek that consent and as Prime Minister of this country that is exactly what I am going to do.

It is an accepted fact that the British people were lied to. The project is and always has been political union. The economic argument, the supposed free trade area, was a seemingly acceptable by product which has fraudulently been advanced as the end in itself. The ‘organisation’ as Cameron puts it has changed, but only in the way it was always intended to do so. It has simply continued its objective of ever closer union on a path to becoming a single political entity.

Cameron doesn’t even have the guts to admit the truth, in much the same way he doesn’t have the guts to admit that in effect the UK no longer has sovereignty. We no longer control our laws and we no longer control taxation of entities on these islands. Without control of these essential pillars of governance, this country cannot consider itself in any sovereign. We have not given up quite a bit of national sovereignty. We have ceded control of that without which we cannot claim to be an independent nation state.

Cameron is deluded at best, an appalling liar at worst, if he honestly thinks he can reform how the EU works in advance of a referendum where the changes will be put to the British people. He has more chance of pulling a living dodo out of his arse. The whole premise is based on a lie. No matter what happens, Cameron is going to declare that he has achieved reform and the likes of the CBI will be right there agreeing with him and spewing more lies – without any challenge from the sick-inducing media which is utterly biased in favour of the EU.

It’s not just Cameron and the CBI that are deserving of white feathers. The BBC deserves one for its prominent coverage on all its radio and TV news of the CBI’s laughable findings that my household and yours are each better off by £3000 every year as a result of EU membership and that CBI members believe the benefits outweigh the costs. Compare that to the almost zero coverage of the contrary view from Business for Britain that more business leaders now say the costs of EU membership outweigh the benefits – and that despite Business for Britain wanting to remain in the EU!

Ed Balls also deserves – among other things – a white feather. This supposed economic genius tells us that there is ‘no future for Britain to walk away from our biggest market’ when the EU is not a market, it is a political construct. He knows the difference, but is part of the agenda and hasn’t the balls to tell the truth.

We are surrounded by lies and deception and spin. And we are nowhere even close to a referendum fight yet. We have been sold out by cowards who do not have the guts or honesty to admit that the only question that matters and needs to be addressed is this…

Who should run Britain?

Nothing else matters. Everything else can be dealt with. The fight we are in is only about this single, essential matter.

Should the British people run Britain, or should we do what suits the narrow interests of the political climbers and the money grubbing corporatists, and leave the EU to run Britain? It is all about sovereignty. Do we rule ourselves or submit to rule from abroad by people whose interests undermine ours? It is the honest question that Cameron, the CBI, the BBC and Labour dare not ask. They are cowards.

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A survey of more than 1,000 business leaders, from companies of all sizes and sectors, has found overwhelming backing for plans for an in-out referendum on Britain’s place in Europe, with 66% in favour, reports the pro-EU Daily Mail.

The story goes on to add that a total of 56% of those surveyed feel that ‘meaningful change’ of the UK’s relationship with Brussels requires treaty change and a relationship based simply on trade against 23 per cent who don’t.

This shows us once again how EU membership (a purely political issue concerning sovereignty and decision making) is being mixed and confused with membership of the Single Market (a purely economic issue concerning trade). By conflating the two, the Europhiles maintain the lie that we have to swallow the politics in order to benefit from the economics. Once again there is no discussion or examination of the other opportunities that would available to the UK if it left the EU, which could be far more beneficial.

With UKIP having departed the field where the EU membership battle is being fought – and focusing itself on ignorant immigration pledges, train lines and water usage in urinals and toilets, rather getting the UK out of the EU – the Mail turns for comment to its usual useful idiots, who still push the false option of EU reform and perpetuate the lie that our involvement in the EU (in all its previous guises) was only ever intended to be about trade.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Business for Britain, said:

It will come as a surprise to many that a nationwide and representative poll of business leaders finds a clear majority support EU treaty change and a return to a trading relationship.

The reason is clear – most business leaders think the costs of the Single Market outweigh its benefits. Now that business has spoken, the pressure is on the Government to get a better deal from Brussels and make life easier for Britain’s job creators.

There it is… ‘return to a trading relationship’ says Elliott. A relationship that never existed. Yet of course the truth must never be allowed to get in the way of an agenda. If Elliott was serious about ‘reform’ he would explain that we got to this stage because the European project has only ever been about legal and political union. Economics and trade were used merely as strategic enablers, helping along the political aims while concealed in plain view.

Adding to Elliott’s misinformation, the Mail adds comment from Alan Halsall, co-chairman of Business for Britain and chairman of Silver Cross Prams, who said:

Business has, until now, been poorly represented in the debate on Britain’s EU membership. My own experience is one of overregulation combined with protectionism, even within the Single Market, and we have therefore focussed on trading with the fast-growing markets in the Pacific region.

I often wonder why there aren’t more business people calling on the Government to make fundamental changes to our EU membership.

This poll demonstrates that I and hundreds of thousands of other UK business people are not alone in wanting to see a much better deal from Brussels.

Horse. Dead. Flogging. The usual rubbish from the usual suspects. The aim was always political so what need was there to engage business?

Then comes a classic illustration of the failure of business or the media to connect the dots or acknowledge the reality of how EU membership stops the UK from making international trade agreements, as the EU decides for the UK what the agreements will be and who they will be with:

The poll finds that British business is increasingly looking beyond Europe for new trade and would like the Government to do so too. By 58 per cent to 21 per cent British business leaders want to see the Government focus on the emerging economic powers like Brazil, China and India rather than the EU for future trading links.

Our trading links are dictated and controlled by the EU. The government does not have the power or right to do anything. With this being the case, why are these Europlastics banging on about reforming ‘Europe’ and its political project, when leaving the EU – perhaps adopting the Norway Option – would make the UK an independent nation state with autonomy that can free itself of the inward looking EU focus they say is holding them back? Such stupidity.

The questions remain. Why do these Europlastics continue to pursue the failing approach of shackling this country to a ‘middle man’ that only passes down to us for implementation decisions that have been made at a global level without our input and influence?

How can they talk of being more outward looking, yet argue in favour of a settlement that means the UK still going without a seat at the real top table, and not having a voice on the committees and organisations where global decisions affecting trade across the globe with the very ’emerging economic powers’ British business is increasingly trying to build stronger ties with, are made?

We are clearly living in the Age of Ignorance.

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Barely a day goes by without the media (particularly the BBC with its desire to air Labour’s current favourite topics) focusing attention on something we are all very acutely aware of, namely energy prices.

In recent days we have had Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) lead off the regular cycle of price rise announcements with an 8.2% hike on gas and electricity bills. The political response was all too predictable. Labour – the party which, with Ed Miliband as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, wilfully took ‘green’ measures in the 2008 Climate Change Act it knew and admitted would drive prices upwards and increase the cost of living – described the rise as scandalous.

As an example of rank hypocrisy, this is head and shoulders beyond anything we’ve seen in a long time.

Meanwhile the Tories maintained their mind-numbingly stupid refrain that the energy sector needs more competition and that people can save money if they shop around. This is patent bollocks. I have used every available price comparison website and I’ve checked for every available deal based on the energy my household uses. I am on a tariff that expires in 2014, but which is cheaper than any tariff or fixed deal currently available on the market from any energy provider.

When my current deal expires I will have to pay more for my energy. All I can do is limit the increase to the smallest amount possible, which will be well over an additional £100 per year. And my provider is yet to increase prices this winter, so the amount will be even more.

My only option to avoid paying more for my energy is to use less. And that is exactly what the government’s energy policy is designed to achieve, to force everyone to use less by driving up the prices. This goes to the heart of the sustainability mantra. This is based in the enviro-belief that humans are a plague on the planet and must use fewer resources. They resent the idea of technology being used to provide abundant energy that is affordable for most people. They want people to have a difficult existence. Richard explained this on EU Referendum this week when he wrote:

Never properly explained, though, is that the price increases are the result of deliberate government polity, using the price mechanism to reduce demand and thereby enable successive governments to meet self-imposed targets for “decarbonisation”.

Where the politicians have been caught out is in listening to Green propaganda, offering the fools’ paradise of increased energy efficiency, though more efficient appliances and insulation, without realising that low-income families are quite unable to offset increased costs in this manner, making fuel poverty the problem of our times – and again one which was entirely predictable.

What was interesting to note last week was SSE echoing what is becoming an industry-wide mantra that government ‘green’ levies are responsible for a substantial proportion of the price increases people have been and will continue to experience and struggle with. They have made clear that while wholesale energy costs have gone up by about 4% in the past year, the cost of government-imposed levies on energy bills has increased by three times as much – 13%, and will continue to rise due to the cost of connecting useless wind farms to the energy grid, where they can provide a fraction of their potential and far less than the equivalent of nuclear or conventional installed capacity.

Today, Christopher Booker reminds us of more mind numbing Tory stupidity from the fool Michael Fallon:

While SSE called for a curb on these green levies – such as the crazy “carbon tax”, designed eventually to double the cost of electricity from fossil fuels, which still supply 70 per cent of our needs – the only official response was a fatuous call from our energy minister, Michael Fallon, for consumers to boycott SSE. Mr Fallon was oblivious to the fact that his Government’s policies will soon force all other energy companies to follow suit.

Just as the government and the media twist themselves into contortions to hide the fact the Royal Mail privatisation has only happened because the EU said it must, the government and the media are twisting themselves into contortions to attack the power companies and conceal from the public the fact that rising energy bills are largely due to government policy; which is taking our money to pour into unjustified subsidies for wind turbines and lavish payments for wealthy landowners to have them on their land. And all this despite the evident inefficiencies and failings of turbines as a source of energy generation.

People can be forgiven for being sick and tired of energy price rises, but they need to be aware of where the upward price pressures are coming from – and the majority of it is from the hypocritical, deceitful and delusional morons that infest the corridors of Whitehall, taking their orders from Little Europe, which has taken its orders from the global power brokers most of us have never heard of.

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Anyone listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning would be left in no doubt about the BBC’s re-doubled commitment to pushing the establishment’s climate change orthodoxy.

Roger Harrabin and Tom Feilden, supported online by Matt McGrath, set about their work in recent days to provide a wealth of material to be broadcast as a precursor to today’s release of the widely trailed Fifth Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change in Stockholm.

The only word to describe the BBC’s reporting is propaganda. It is the only description, given the amount of time they have devoted to the Climate Change on that one programme alone today, and their selection of a procession of interviewees who are all paid for members of the climate change alarmist community, reliant on maintaining the narrative and the funds continuing to flow from our pockets into theirs.

There has been no balance whatsover. Only fleeting references to scepticism were made, without any explanation of the arguments underpinning their argument. They were quickly dismissed with carefully selected words deployed to give the impression that scepticism is just the preserve of a tiny minority, while suggesting the evidence they have provided that discredits the alarmist position is trivial in nature – as if the sceptics were merely nit picking.

It goes without saying, there was not a single reference to the scandalous story earlier this week about how governments had objected the the ‘scientific’ report because it confirmed the observations of a statistical halt in temperature rises, and pushed for the language to be changed so government policy could be underpinned by the ‘consensus’. The biased BBC were careful to omit that, careful to airbrush it from the record, lest it lead listeners to have doubt about what will be published later.

Every tool in the PR and communicators arsenal was employed today. In segments of just a few minutes, and in reports from their correspondants, the BBC sought to:

Paint the sceptics’ arguments as unreasonable with the use of dismissive language and intonation

Present in detail the position and ‘lines to take’ of the alarmists and only present the counter viewpoint as a footnote, while purposely leaving out the salient details that contradict, through science and observation, the alarmist position

Deal with the impossible to hide errors and exaggerations by the alarmists by playing them down as trivial matters

Give the impression the sceptics have only gained ground in the last few years because of effective PR and use of techniques to sensationalise otherwise shallow and meaningless arguments

Deploys statistics as numbers are powerful – pushing the report’s ‘95%’ certainty that mankind is warming the planet and there is a need to reverse it

Give the impression of balance by playing Lord Lawson’s comments about the 15 years where warming has been statistically insignificant, but only playing his comment in the background of a segment and talking over the key takeaway line about 15 years with no warming

Give the impression there has only been a small slow down in warming and use language to suggest the slow down had already passed, even though it is ongoing

Appeal to authority time and again by repeatedly stating ‘overwhelming majority of scientists’ agree on climate change, until listeners are repeating it in their sleep

The result has been an utter distortion of events and facts, a partial, biased position that is not reporting, but advocacy for one argument over another.

What the BBC has been broadcasting today falls so far short of its Charter obligations, it makes a mockery of its claim to be an impartial and trusted broadcaster. As we know there will be no sanction from this by the BBC Trust, it also makes a mockery of the checks and balances that supposedly exist to hold the BBC to account for its output.

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After a weekend offline, savouring the rugby and the dubious delights of preparing the garden for autumn, a visit of the news sites reveals the Guardian’s War on Murdoch continues apace.

It is not a battle about media plurality, if it were then the Guardian’s broadcast arm, aka the BBC, would be in Rusbridger’s sights, so overwhelming is its news media presence on TV, radio and the internet. No, this fight is about limiting the scope and reach of an alternative to the Guardian/BBC worldview and their nasty left wing agenda.

Having done the ‘phone hacking’ story to death, including a number of serious false claims and errors that were played down when corrected; and having managed to ensure the Guardian-connected Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer protected Rusbridger’s brother-in-law, David Leigh from arrest and prosecution – despite his self confessed illegal behaviour in listening to other people’s voicemails – today the Guardian changes tack and marks a new low even for that hateful low circulation rag. using a new proxy.

The employment of Chris Huhne, the disgraced convicted criminal and confessed serial liar, to attack Murdoch, is not just desperate, it is reprehensible. The BBC shares the shame, kissing the Guardian’s loss-making behind and pushing the story with gusto on the radio this morning. He still will not accept responsibility for his own actions without heavy caveats and excuses, but the Guardian is delighted to use him as a tool to service its own ends – just like the climate change businesses that are filling Huhne’s pockets with cash in return for advice on how best to corrupt and milk the system.

Inside the parallel universe in which Huhne resides, where inverted morality holds sway and people ascribe responsibility for their actions to someone else, who they then attack for it, it is held that Murdoch and his press are responsible for corroding public trust in politicians. No, really. Huhne tries to find an angle for his attack by suggesting the reason why the News of the World put what he tries to describe as so many resources, into proving his affair with Carina Trimmingham, was that he had called for the police to re-open the phone hacking investigation.

So the demise of the saintly Huhne, which began with the exposure of his extra-marital affair (one of many if his children are to be believed) only started because of his selfless desire to aid the Guardian’s noble campaign to nail News International’s impropriety and right some wrongs into the bargain (but not it seems any comeuppance for the Guardian’s David Leigh, naturally). Then, wails Huhne, the Murdoch press ‘groomed’ his wife into spilling the beans about his criminal act of pressuring her into taking his speeding points to avoid a driving ban. He bleats that:

The Crown Prosecution Service loves a celebrity trial. It was the end of my political career, and it locked up my ex-wife too. She was just another “burned contact” for the Murdoch press.

Burned contacts? The Guardian knows all about burning contacts. Remember how they used then turned on Julian Assange? Where were they after coaxing a story out of Edward Snowden, then running for cover to avoid prosecution themselves?

As an exercise in self justification and an effort to sanitise oneself, Huhne’s outrageously manipulative piece is an absolute masterclass. Oh the unfairness of it all. Sure it was his fault, but… For a pathological and selfish liar such as Huhne there always has to be someone else to blame. He refuses to accept the reality that public trust in politicians is not because of media actions, but the behaviour of lying, corrupt and self serving parasites such as himself. There has to be a conspiracy behind it. Perhaps this piece may spark something of a reaction from James Murdoch when he reads the following passage:

The wider lesson is a liberal leitmotif: it is the duty of politicians to combat concentrations of power wherever they are, private or public, business or state. Time and again, Murdoch has used his media muscle to bulldoze a way for his business interests. In 2010 he wanted to buy all of Sky, and needed Vince Cable’s approval. His son James even came to lobby me. The implicit offer was: back us, and we will back you.

That is quite some accusation and I’m sure Huhne has evidence by way of a witness or a record of the meeting’s discussion to back up his claim. Or perhaps he expects the public to take him at his word…?

Huhne of course says nothing about the Guardian’s use of media muscle and its effective editorial control of the BBC and left wing MPs, a much bigger stick than anything Murdoch wields, to force the capitulation of Tiny Rowland after a smear campaign so it could buy the Observer. Then there’s the way they undermined the Conservative government by going after the idiot Neil Hamilton for cash for questions – something he still denies and for which there is a substantial amount of material that suggests that some of the Guardian’s evidence and witness statements were fabricated.

What this all goes to show is that as long as one is happy to preach the Guardian’s gospel by talking up left wing concerns, climate alarmism, attacks on the British entity and identity, or servicing the assault on Murdoch, no amount of criminal activity, viciousness or sickening mindset is enough to preclude anyone from a platform and copious column inches. It’s a bit like the Guardian saying, that person is a pathetic scumbag, but he’s their kind of pathetic scumbag so he’s OK.

The whole attack on Murdoch, now rejoined by Huhne, is nakedly political and self serving. It has nothing to do with public interest and everything to do with preserving a liberal dominance of the news media in the UK, where the Guardian (despite its tumbling sales), the BBC and the Press Association work together to push a slanted narrative or exclude stories unhelpful to the ‘progressives’ from the coverage they dominate. This is the journalism of the gutter, shamelessly executed.

UPDATE: A Mail hack has kindly done a piece that compares some of Huhne’s self-pitying cant with the reality his deluded mind has tried to airbrush from the record. It reinforces what a lying, discredited, unreliable, untrustworthy, arrogant and conceited tosser Huhne is. But the Guardian loves him.